Science Stories

By the time a plant droops, it has been short of water for a while. Wilting leaves are a late signal, not the first. So, can you spot a thirsty plant earlier, before its health and productivity suffer? At the University of Twente, a greenhouse full of tomato plants became the testing ground for that question. The answer involves a thermal camera, invisible light and a very hot July.

A child with asthma visits the hospital a few times a year. Yet, at those very appointments, they are often doing perfectly well. But what happens at home, in the months between visits? On 8 October 2026, paediatric pulmonologist Boony Thio delivered his inaugural lecture as a professor at the University of Twente. Thio wants to use digital monitoring, data and artificial intelligence to identify warning signs much earlier. Rather than waiting for the next asthma attack, the aim is to prevent it from happening in the first place.

Your phone, your car and your washing machine all run on chips, and hardly any of them are made near you. Every few months another shortage pushes prices up. Europe answered with a Chips Act and billions in subsidies, and the factories still are not there. So what makes a chip industry this hard to build?

Grief is a natural part of life, yet many people find it difficult to talk about. In this episode of University of the Netherlands, grief professor Lonneke Lenferink answers questions about loss, saying goodbye, and how people cope with bereavement.

In the Netherlands, everyone aged 55 to 75 gets a home test for bowel cancer every two years. An abnormal result leads to a colonoscopy, in which a doctor steers a long tube with a camera through your large intestine. In 2022, almost 57,000 people had one. Could a robot make that easier for the doctor and more comfortable for you?